While I understand what your saying, I can’t agree. If I’m the only one in my neighborhood that is prepping I won’t have enough supplies to cover the 100 odd families around me. So I don’t plan on staying here. My group has a location where we will join up together and where the vast majority of our supplies are and where we can defend what we’ve spent many years and many, many dollars putting together. If refugees happen to come across our front gate, we will assist them to the best of our abilities with food and medical aid and then send them on their way. To try to cover an entire town or village with what is actually our limited supplies means we all starve together. Even the garden with what seeds someone may have put aside wouldn’t be enough to feed so many hungry mouths. That’s why we made the decision long ago to not put ourselves in that position.
If you are reading this article, I would imagine that you have never eaten an MRE before. Why do I say that? Well, for anyone who has eaten MREs you probably already have a strong opinion about them or at the very least, your experience might be based upon military service years ago. That is the perspective I was coming from when Meal Kit Supply approached me about reviewing their MREs that they produce. I had eaten more than my fair share of MREs when I was in the Army, but things have changed as you would expect with the passage of more years than I want to think about so I decided to take them up on the offer and while I was at it, share my opinion on what if any place MREs have in the food storage plan for preppers.
In both his book Rawles on Retreats and Relocation and in his survivalist novel, Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, Rawles describes in great detail retreat groups "upgrading" brick or other masonry houses with steel reinforced window shutters and doors, excavating anti-vehicular ditches, installing warded gate locks, constructing concertina wire obstacles and fougasses, and setting up listening post/observation posts (LP/OPs.) Rawles is a proponent of including a mantrap foyer at survival retreats, an architectural element that he calls a "crushroom".[8]

I haven't used them yet since they are in my apocalypse bag (which more people should have and less people should make fun of because I mean seriously in what way is it dumb to be prepared, even if it becomes a hobby...an expensive hobby...a hobby that caused my wife and children to leave me because I woke them up constantly at 5:13am with homemade alarms to run threat drills in case bandits with grenades came or whatever) but yeah anyway I'm gonna be really glad they are there even if it's just for piece of mind!

The whole facility costs $20 million dollars to build and can accommodate up to a dozen families. For the years to come, residents can get food from its food stores, fish tanks, and garden planters with grow lamps. Apart from a safe home to spend a few years in, the Survival Condo Project also offers five year supply of food per person, mandatory survival training, and internet access for every purchase.
I can a bunch of meat. I stock up when its on sale then freeze and when I have a slow day (lol) I thaw it and start canning. It is SO much cheaper than canned chicken or beef from the store!!! I also have a generator for my fridge and freezer so if we were going to be with out power for long my plan is to start canning as fast as possible. You can also dehydrate fruits and veggies that you would normally freeze (berries, spinach, almost anything) but that would need to be done before the outage of course.

I would never advise you start a survival food stockpile with something like this, but once you have a year or two of long-shelf life survival foods you can grab at a grocery store, and you’ve saved up enough in emergency funds of course, investing in something like this is, in my opinion, serious peace of mind. You, again, hopefully won’t have to use it, but if the time comes when you do, and you run out of your year or two supply at hand, this would come in really handy, especially since it will a quarter of a century before it even remotely starts going off.

You might think it’s silly to grab one of these when you can DIY one yourself, but I do often feel like preps that are ugly are kind of frustrating to have to live with in the long-term. Besides, if you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re a prepper, nothing works better than hiding your preps in a pretty package like this. And you buy them once, how often are you going to replace a rain barrel? Pretty much never!

thank you for this, it gives me more ideas on what to look at, being married to a filipina we eat lots of rice, we are a family of 5, with younger children. We have enough food for 2yrs put away. but with this list in hand we will put more away.we look at long term, as u do not know what is really going to happen at any given time. while i am still alive i will make sure my family is taken care off and protected..only thing we dont have is a farm and that would be the bee’s knees…lots of people in here give great feed back and some bloody good idea…thank u everyone…for the wonderful comments, the advice never got astray..

A very timely article! I’ve been purchasing some basic dehydrated foods to experiment with this past month or so and hope to start cooking with them in the new year. I want to see what I will use and what, if anything, won’t be as popular. I’m starting small, but really looking forward to playing with them. 🙂 Also, there is something very seductive about not having to worry about whether or not I have any fresh eggs or milk or sour cream on hand just when I need them!
The MPS totes let in a little water when we submerged them. And the tote lid bent a little under the weight testing, but did not collapse or hurt the food. As expected, the cardboard boxes containing Mountain House foods got soggy immediately. But the packets of food themselves are waterproof. The boxes stacked well but didn’t offer nearly the same protection as the buckets.
While media coverage has often focused on a certain gun-toting, masculine segment of the subculture, both women described being drawn to prepping as a form of female self-empowerment. As Bedford sees it, finding yourself unprepared in the midst of a crisis can be a “terrible feeling of weakness” for a mother. “It makes sense to be empowered and trained and have the right supplies—and in this case, to have extra food on hand—because as a mom in particular, your family just relies on you,” she said.
But mothers like Nygaard, Luther, and Bogwalker probably don’t need to a sociologist to remind them of that: They’re busy taking care of the kids, cooking, cleaning, running their own business, and doing their best to ensure that everyone around them has everything they need. It can be hard to draw the line between being a mom who is a survivalist and simply being a mom who lives her life with an eye to the future, but maybe that’s kind of the point: In giving traditional “women’s work” a name — like prepping or homesteading — they’re simply making that work more visible.
Personal hygiene is even more important in emergency situations than during everyday life. We have so many conveniences at our disposal in our society. Yet many people don’t realize the challenges when those conveniences are no longer available. Personal hygiene is really about keeping clean and avoiding unsanitary conditions that can lead to illness.

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Out in Colorado the local merchants were so up with this that they donated most all the supplies. we created fact sheets, handouts, recipes, Q&A, bring in other experts, maybe even offer door prizes ( we gave ball canning books 8.50 as door prize.) hands on folks prepped cleaned and bag. The extension office gave brochures, and goodies. They were held on Saturdays and were about 4 hours long.This can be expanded in many ways… and look how it’s helping. The folks who have to go to food banks don’t want too but don’t have the tools.

I would never advise you start a survival food stockpile with something like this, but once you have a year or two of long-shelf life survival foods you can grab at a grocery store, and you’ve saved up enough in emergency funds of course, investing in something like this is, in my opinion, serious peace of mind. You, again, hopefully won’t have to use it, but if the time comes when you do, and you run out of your year or two supply at hand, this would come in really handy, especially since it will a quarter of a century before it even remotely starts going off.
The disciples take Jesus’ remarks literally and incorrectly. They note that they have two swords, but Jesus cuts off the discussion. Something is not right, but it is too late to discuss it. As the arrest will show, they have misunderstood. They draw swords then, but Jesus stops their defense in its tracks. He is not telling them to buy swords to wield in physical battle. They will have to provide for themselves and fend for themselves, but not through the shedding of blood. They are being drawn into a great cosmic struggle, and they must fight with spiritual swords and resources. The purchase of swords serves only to picture this coming battle. This fight requires special weapons (Eph 6:10-18).

Rice. This is an old standby. It can form the base of many tasty and nutritious meals. Be aware that although it requires no processing, it does require quite a bit of water to cook. It is most economical to buy rice in 40 lb bags and repackage it into buckets yourself, a 5 gallon bucket will hold a 40lb bag. For a bit more you can find rice sold pre-sealed in buckets from a number of sources.

Sticking around when there is at least a 50% chance of a disaster occurring (hurricane, flood, landslides, tsunami, wildfire) is just plain silly. Part of your planning should be to determine the trigger point for evacuation as well as identification of an evacuation site and a route to get there. Better yet, plan multiple alternate routes as well.
They have a huge selection of dehydrated and freeze-dried foods from top brands such as Saratoga Farms, Mountain House, EasyPrep, OvaEasy, Yoders, Datrex, Mainstay, WonderMill, and more. They also have a complete selection of MRE Military Meals. These include self-heating kits with meals like spaghetti, sweet and sour chicken, and garden vegetables in tomato sauce.
While I understand what your saying, I can’t agree. If I’m the only one in my neighborhood that is prepping I won’t have enough supplies to cover the 100 odd families around me. So I don’t plan on staying here. My group has a location where we will join up together and where the vast majority of our supplies are and where we can defend what we’ve spent many years and many, many dollars putting together. If refugees happen to come across our front gate, we will assist them to the best of our abilities with food and medical aid and then send them on their way. To try to cover an entire town or village with what is actually our limited supplies means we all starve together. Even the garden with what seeds someone may have put aside wouldn’t be enough to feed so many hungry mouths. That’s why we made the decision long ago to not put ourselves in that position.

Your next trip to the grocery can yield extra provision to add to your emergency supply. The next time you have a couple hours of spare time you can scout rural routes out of town, or get in some practice on any number of skills. Even so, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and bewildered staring down all the possible disasters that may occur and all the varied skills to learn and supplies to gather.

Of course, each of us should prepare for poor health, loss of job, loss of home due to local conditions, but you have support systems in place for localized problems. The area where I live was burned out four months ago. Over 1,000 homes were either destroyed or damaged. People have moved on. Reconstruction has started. Road are being cleared of mud and debris. We may have more local devastation, but it won’t affect 99.99% of the folks reading this post. An atomic attack, an EMP attack, a CME burst from the sun over a widespread area, a 1918 type of flu epidemic, all of those things will affect 99.99% of those reading this post. I don’t think those are bogus in the least nor hype just to get readers on this list. I sincerely hope that you re-consider your position that they are just hype to get readership.
Once you get going, it will be easy to lose track of what you already have. The best way to overcome the state of confusion you will experience six months down the road is to start keeping track of your stored items now – from the beginning. Use a spiral notebook, a computer spreadsheet, or a clipboard and a pad of paper. Update your inventory with the item and date of purchase as it goes into storage and of course, mark it off as it rotates out.

Because I couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like to actually live off the stuff, I placed an order for Wise’s Seven Day Emergency Food and Drink Supply, a shoebox-size assortment of breakfast foods, entrées, and dehydrated whey milk substitute, in addition to a few other options I’d discovered online. I wanted to know what an insurance policy tasted like.